I always speak with the
greatest delight and satisfaction in the presence of my friends
the members of the Vegetarian Society. With them I am quite at my
ease, I have no reservation, I have no dissatisfaction. This is
not the case when I speak for my friends the Anti-Vivisectionists,
the Anti-Vaccinationists, the Spiritualists, or the advocates of
freedom for women. I always feel that such of these as are not
abstainers from flesh-food have unstable ground under their feet,
and it is my great regret that, when helping them in their good
works, I cannot openly and publicly maintain what I so ardently
believe—that the Vegetarian movement is the bottom and basis of
all other movements towards Purity, Freedom, Justice, and
Happiness.

I think it was Benjamin
D'Israeli who said that we had stopped short at Comfort, and had
mistaken it for Civilisation, content to increase the former at
the expense of the latter. Not a day passes without the
perspicacity of this remark coming forcibly before me. Comfort,
luxury, indulgence, and ease abound in this age, and in this part
of the world; but, alas! Of Civilisation we have as yet acquired
but the veriest rudiments. Civilisation means not mere physical
ease, but moral and spiritual Freedom—Sweetness and Light—with
which the customs of the age are in most respects at dire enmity.
I named just now freedom for women. One of the greatest hindrances
to the advancement and enfranchisement of the sex is due to the
luxury of the age, which demands so much time, study, money, and
thought to be devoted to what is called the "pleasures of the
table." A large class of men seems to believe that women were
created chiefly to be "housekeepers," a term which they apply
almost exclusively to ordering dinners and superintending their
preparation. Were this office connected only with the garden, the
field, and the orchard, the occupation might be truly said to be
refined, refining, and worthy of the best and most gentle lady in
the land. But, connected as it is actually with slaughter-houses,
butchers' shops, and dead carcases, it is an occupation at once
unwomanly, inhuman, and barbarous in the extreme. Mr. Ruskin has
said that the criterion of a beautiful action or of a noble
thought is to be found in song, and that an action about
which we cannot make a poem is not fit for humanity. Did he ever
apply this test to flesh-eating? Many a lovely poem, many a
beautiful picture, may be made about gardens and fruit-gathering,
and the bringing home of the golden produce of harvest, or the
burden of the vineyards, with groups of happy boys and girls, and
placid, mild-eyed oxen bending their necks under their fragrant
load. But I defy anyone to make beautiful verse or to paint
beautiful pictures about slaughterhouses, running with streams of
steaming blood, and terrified, struggling animals felled to the
ground with pole-axes; or of a butcher's stall hung round with
rows of gory corpses, and folks in the midst of them bargaining
with the ogre who keeps the place for legs and shoulders and
thighs and heads of the murdered creatures! What horrible
surroundings are these for gentle and beautiful ladies! The word
"wife" means, in the old Saxon tongue, a "weaver," and that of
"husband" means, of course, a "husbandman." "Lady," too, is a word
originally signifying "loaf-giver." In these old words have come
down to us a glimpse of a fair picture of past times. The wife, or
weaver, is the spinner, the maker, whose function it is to create
forms of beauty and decorative art, to brighten, adorn, and make
life lovely. Or if, as "lady" of the house, we look on her in the
light of the provider and dispenser of good things, it is not
loathsome flesh of beasts that she gives, but bread—sweet and
pure, and innocent type of all human food. As for the man, he is
the cultivator of the ground, a sower of grain, a tiller of the
field. I would like to see these old times back, with all their
sweet and tender Arcadian homeliness, in the place of the ugly
lives which most folks lead in our modern towns, whose streets are
hideous, above all at night with their crowded gin-palaces,
blood-smeared butchers' stalls, reeling drunkards, and fighting
women. People talk to me sometimes about peace conventions, and
ask me to join societies for putting down war. I always say: "You
are beginning at the wrong end, and putting the cart before the
horse." If you want people to leave off fighting like beasts of
prey, you must first get them to leave off living like beasts of
prey. You cannot reform institutions without first reforming men.
Teach men to live as human beings ought to live, to think wisely,
purely, and beautifully, and to have noble ideas of the purpose
and meaning of Humanity, and they will themselves reform their
institutions. Any other mode of proceeding will result only in a
patchwork on a worthless fabric, a whitening of a sepulchre full
of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Flesh-meats and
intoxicating drinks—the pabulum of Luxury—are the baneful coil of
hydra-headed Vice, whose ever-renewing heads we vainly strike,
while leaving the body of the dragon still untouched. Strike
there—at the heart—at the vitals of the destructive monster, and
the work of Heracles, the Redeemer, is accomplished. […]

I have stood so often on
this and on other platforms throughout England, as well as in
Scotland and Switzerland, to speak to my friends about the
physiological, chemical, anatomical, and economical aspects of the
non-flesh diet, that tonight, for a change, I am going to take
another and a higher line. We will, therefore, if you please, take
"as read" all the vindications of our mode of living furnished by
various scientific arguments: that we have the organisation of the
fruit-eater; that the constituent elements of vegetable food
furnish all the necessary force and material of bodily vigour;
that it is cheaper to buy beans and meal than to buy pork and
suet; that land goes further and supports more people under a
vegetable cultivation than when laid out for pasture, and so
forth. All these arguments, more or less eloquently and clearly
formulated, most of you have by heart, and those who have not may
buy them all for sixpence of the Vegetarian Society. So I am going
to talk to you tonight about quite another branch of our subject,
the loftiest and fruitfulest branch of the whole tree. I am going
to tell you that I see in the doctrine we are here to preach the
very culmination and crown of the Gentle Life, that Life which, in
some way, we all of us in our best moments long to live, but which
it is only given now and again to some great and noble
soul, almost divine, fully to realise and glorify in the eyes of
the world. I said just now that "in our best moments" we all long
to lead the Ideal Life. Some of us have many "best moments," and
long ones too: moments that dominate and top our work-a-day
efforts always, like a light of stars overhead, through which the
Heaven looks down on us. Some of us, again, have very few "best
moments," short and feeble, like lights over a marsh, never
steadfast, always flickering in and out, and paling and flitting
when we get abreast of them. With this class of persons the Ideal
is very faint and unstable, while with the former it is strong and
masterful. Societies like ours are made to encourage the "best
moments" of the weakly, and to glorify those of the strong.
Societies like ours are made to train soldiers and provide them
with leaders to fight for the Ideal. Beginners and feeble folk
cannot stand without encouragement in the teeth of a hot fire, nor
rush upon the enemy unless some hero heads them and shows the way.
The Ideal Life, the Gentle Life, has many enemies, and the weapons
used by these are various. They are pseudo-scientific,
pseudo-religious, pseudo-philanthropic, pseudo-aesthetic, and
pseudo-utilitarian. And the enemies are of all ranks, professions,
and interests. But of all the weapons used, the most deadly, the
most terrific, is—Ridicule. Yes, Ridicule slays its tens of
thousands!

To be laughed at is far
more awful to average mortals than to be preached at, groaned at,
cursed at. It is the weapon which the journalists almost always
handle with the greatest facility. These are the men who laugh for
their living. They have replaced, in modern days, the paid
domestic jesters of olden times. Every town keeps its paid jester
now in the office of its local paper, just as, a few centuries
back, great nobles kept their man in cap and motley to crack jokes
on the guests at table. We have not changed in manners, but in
manner only. And the very first thing that Reformers have to do is
to get over minding the man in motley. Let him laugh. He cannot
argue. Laughing is his stock-in-trade. If he laugh not too
coarsely, and avoid blaspheming, he is, after all, very harmless.
It is his privilege to laugh at all that is new and unwonted. All
children do that, and the man in motley is but a clever child. Why
let him knock you down with his fool's truncheon? Wince, and
shrink, and expostulate: he sees his advantage then, and belabours
you pitilessly. But heed him not, and go on doing your work with a
great heart as though it were a royal thing to do, and he will
soon be off to some other quarry. Only be sure in your own mind
that you are right; only be set in dead earnest on keeping
that royal thing in clear view and working up to it, and the Ideal
will reward you by becoming the Real and Actual. It is not
necessary to go very far afield to find this royal work. It does
not lie—for most of us—in setting out to accomplish some vast
task. Most of us will find it in just simply and calmly shaping
out and lifting up our own lives so as to beautify and perfect and
unify them, being just and merciful to all men and all creatures.
We Vegetarians carry the Ideal a stage lower, and therefore a
stage higher than do other folk. We find the duty to the lowliest
the duty completest in blessing. Let me tell you a story. Once, in
the far-away old days of romance, there was a Christian Knight of
peerless repute, whose greatest longing and dearest hope it was to
have the Vision of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is the name
given in chivalry to the Chalice of the Altar containing the
Sacred Blood of Christ, and this was said to be shown in a Vision
by God to those whom He judged worthy of the sight of this supreme
symbol of His Grace, in the moment when they pleased Him most.
Well, the Knight of whom I speak, in pursuance of the Object of
his desire, joined the Crusaders, and performed prodigies of
valour and wonderful feats of arms in battle against the Infidels,
but all in vain; he had no Vision and remained unblessed. Then he
left Palestine and went and laid aside his sword in a monastery,
and lived a life of long penance and meditation, desiring always a
sight of the Holy Grail. But that, too, was in vain. At last,
sorrowful and almost despairing, he returned homeward to his
domain. As he drew near his castle, he saw gathered about its
gates a crowd of beggars, sick, maimed, aged and infirm, old men,
women, babes, and children-all who were left behind on the land
while the hale and hearty went to fight the Saracens. Then he said
to his squire: "What are these?" "They are beggars," the squire
answered, "who can neither work nor fight. They clamour for bread;
but why heed such a herd of useless, despicable wretches? Let me
drive them away." "Nay," said the Knight, touched to the heart, "I
have slain many abroad, let me save some at home. Call these poor
folk together, give them bread and drink; let them be warmed and
clothed." And lo! As the words passed his lips, a light from
heaven fell upon him, and looking up, he saw, at last, the
longed-for vision of the Holy Grail! Yes, that humble, simple,
homely duty of charity was more precious in the Eyes Divine than
all his deeds of prowess in the field of arms, or his long
devotions in the cloister!

And so with us. Who so
poor, so oppressed, so helpless, so mute and uncared for, as the
dumb creatures who serve us—they who, but for us, must starve, and
who have no friend on earth if man be their enemy? Even these are
not too low for pity, nor too base for justice. And, without fear
of irreverence or slight on the holy name that Christians love, we
may truly say of them, as of the captive, the sick, and the
hungry: "Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these, my
brethren, ye do it unto me."

For, as St. Francis of
Assisi has told us, all the creatures of God's hand are brethren.
"My sisters the birds," he was wont to say, "My brothers the kine
in the meadows." The essential of true justice is the sense of
solidarity. All creatures, from highest to lowest, stand hand in
hand before God. Nor shall we ever begin to spiritualise our lives
and thoughts, to lighten and lift ourselves higher, until we
recognise this solidarity, until we learn to look upon the
creatures of God's hand, not as mere subjects for hunting and
butchery, for dissecting and experimentation, but as living
souls with whom, as well as with the sons of men, God's
covenant is made.